DEATH TREND 1: ALIVE AFTER DEATH

TREND 1: ALIVE AFTER DEATH

NEW TECHNOLOGIES, NEW DIMESIONS

HAVING THE LAST WORD!

Emerging Trends:

While Digital Domains is into re-creating virtual people complete with attitude, others are creating web-based possibilities for reaching people after you die.In 2000 Todd Michael created a site, dead now, called finalthoughts.com on which you could leave instructions, letters, anything at all that you wanted to be sent to specific people after you die. Think of it as afterlife e-mail. Spooky but someone was bound to think of it, and what better way to get even with someone you love or hate?Keep those e-mails going long after you are gone. Spam from the dead … awesome or awful? Don’t believe me? Check out switched.com/2009/07/27/social-networking-in-the-afterlife.

Kooky as this particular idea might sound, it touches upon the next Emerging Trend. How do we want to plan our deaths and our presence here after death? Medical advances will allow us to know and prepare for how and when we will die. Technology allows us ways to remain here in spirit if not in person for a while longer, at least until someone deletes our virtual presence off the hard drive or server. Or perhaps until the server dies!

Next Opportunities:

In multiple forms, the last word will be coming to the digital marketplace, some kind and gentle, others harsh and nasty. You might get flowers or e-greetings on your birthday for years to come from your mother who might die 5 years from now because she set it up via the web before she died, or you might get spammed by your ex-husband, perhaps exposing your weakest moments long after he is gone.

The days of keeping the urn of your parents’ ashes on the mantle will soon be replaced by an eternal virtual presence that will periodically appear to scold you or to empathize. And since their exact personality will have been decoded through their genes and physical documentation, you can have a chat in “real time” with them through their stored database. Imagine a “live” conversation with JC himself or even Einstein. Sounds far fetched? A bit futuristic?Not really. Watch for the first crude forms of this to hit a web site near you in a couple of years. Move over avatars…here comes the real thing.

Meantime you can choose to send your ashes into outer space.Book a one-way ticket on Virgin Galactic. It’s happening!